


Slice of Unlife

by factorielle



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-05-02
Updated: 2010-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:20:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factorielle/pseuds/factorielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To those who live and work with them, the Children of the Night are highly overrated: they whine whenever you open the blinds, leave their bloody plates everywhere, and keep calling you for a play-by-play report when you're at a baseball game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dracula never played baseball

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Investing in Chaos is Fashionable](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1039) by Yukitsu. 
  * Inspired by [Depth Perception](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1106) by Yukitsu. 



> The above fics created the universe that I'm shamelessly ~~stealing~~ borrowing. I recommend reading those first, as most of the world-building happens there.
> 
> Currently gen, but these things tend to change.

Trust your partner.

It's the first thing they tell you when you start training, and it gets repeated ad nauseam until most trainees are ready to trust anyone just to stop hearing it. But if the method is inefficient, the sentiment isn't. In this line of work, it's plain impossible to survive to old (or in some cases, adult) age without, indeed, trusting your partner.

If you don't like them even a little, you might wish you hadn't.

Izumi knows he's been lucky, even the first time. Hamada is in Research and Development now, safely out of a front line where he couldn't keep up anymore, but at least he's still alive. Working with Abe was surprisingly easy, and Mizutani fit in well with them afterwards.

Ever since Abe teamed up with Mihashi, though...

It's not that he doesn't trust or like Mizutani, Izumi reasons as he makes his way to the last free stool in the bar. Nothing like that. They'e been working together for a while now, and he knows exactly what to expect, at which point it's better to start fighting like he's on his own. Izumi took over most of Abe's responsibilities, even though he could never hope to be half as good a scout or a sniper. The combination works, and he has no mind to change it.

But every now and then there's a fumble too much and it's Hamada all over again and the heartbeats until Mizutani signals that he's fine are the longest and most painful ever and Izumi hates it. He hates even more that he's not Abe, can't nag, can only shrug and move on.

For nights like those, there's Vlady's.

It's widely agreed that the name sucks, and the owner is no more a descendant of Dracula's than Izumi is. The barkeep is stuck between a rock and a hard place, attempting to cater to the Children of the Night by serving blood (ostensibly all animal, unless he knows you well enough) as well as to the Organization's staff by having baseball paraphernalia up on all the walls. As a result, the place gives the impression of a goth sports bar, which explains why nobody unrelated would ever stop to drink there.

The bar also serves as an information point and a sanctuary, even though the permanent hostility between Vlady's customers turns to brawls in the surrounding streets more often than not.

Most importantly, the beer is strong and flows easily; half the Organization has a tab here, and Chief Momoe makes sure that the debtors pay up regularly.

"You've been coming here more and more often, Izumin," a voice whispers in his ear, and for a moment he hates all vampires with the kind of passion that gets one tossed out of the Organization on account of being ruled by their emotions.

"You can only know that if you're here too," he grits out. Haruna is grinning, taking obvious pride in startling an exhausted, off-his-guard human. That says more about him than any of Abe's half-answers to Mizutani ever could.

"I've been bored lately. You guys are doing too well."

True; and the better they're doing, the more they push themselves, the more often Izumi ends up here. Hanai, too, although they usually pretend not to see each other.

"Still haven't caught you yet," Izumi answers, setting his empty glass on the table. Despite the provocative tone and gesture, the barkeep doesn't even bother to monitor the situation. Izumi _has_ been here a lot lately, and he suspects Haruna drops by at the end of bad nights, just in case his former partner shows up.

"Want to try one more time?" The grin is still there, showing a bit of fang. No question that the few customers who aren't completely focused on their own drinks believe that Haruna is offering something of an entirely different nature, but that's their problem.

"Not tonight."

"Come oooon," Haruna whines, not quite tugging at his arm yet but getting there. "I'm bored and you're angry. It's a perfect match."

It really is, and fighting is still a lot more satisfying than drowning his worries at Vlady's. "Fine," Izumi concedes. "Thirty seconds head start."

Haruna leaves in a flash of sparkly fangs, and Izumi digs in his pocket for cash to drop on the counter. Anyone would agree that even for him, trying to take Haruna on without back-up is the stupidest thing ever; but Abe will never blame Izumi for using his former partner as a punching bag.  


* * *

Fact: no-one matches up to Abe when it comes to tracking.

Fact: Abe used to know Haruna better than anyone.

Fact: Abe talks more than he thinks when he's bored or angry or worried.

Fact: Izumi is a good listener.

So he doesn't start searching after leaving the bar. Instead he heads back towards the Organization at a leisurely pace, right hand laid over the sheath wrapped around his thigh, ostensibly paying no attention to his surroundings. For a moment he's nothing but a young man going home after an evening of boozing, minding his own business and counting under his breath.

He's just hit forty-six when Haruna drops in front of him from whatever roof he was goofing off on, light and silent if not for the whiny "why are you going ho-"

There's no extraneous movement, the knife's darkened blade doesn't flash in the street light, but when Izumi retreats there's nothing but a red line across Haruna's throat.

"-me?" His opponent presses his fingers to the already closing wound. Izumi expects him to lick the blood, which is gross but arguably traditional of badass vampires, but he wipes it on his trousers instead, and glares. "I guess you're not."

Not even finished speaking that he's charging already, coming in from the left, and instinct takes over. Sidestep, parry, counter. Feint, attack, dodge. Words are a waste of breath.

"You're good." Obviously, vampires don't have that problem.

Izumi acknowledges the compliment by slashing at Haruna's arm, but his attack is dodged way too easily for his satisfaction.

"Could be better, though. You ever considered it?"

No need to detail what he's talking about. Much like Tajima, Haruna is the kind of vampire who could sire half a town with a single smile.

"Don't need it," Izumi breathes out as he drops to the ground to avoid too-sharp claws. Doing this after a hard night makes it certain that his legs will be killing him tomorrow, but so be it.

"Really? Think of how much faster you could be. Stronger."

Sometimes Izumi understands why Abe got so angry sometimes, reminiscing about how Haruna never seemed to take anything seriously. Not his life, not his job, not anything. "No sun, no mirrors, no garlic? I'll pass."

He manages to kick Haruna in the stomach, which barely makes him stumble. Out of energy already?

There's a pause, a moment of silence and stillness, and then "you could protect your partner better."

The words are bad enough, but it's the punch in the chest that makes Izumi see stars, black, and then nothing at all.


	2. The worst hangover ever

When you spend enough time in hospital rooms, the regular beeping of a heart monitor becomes a soothing sound. _Still alive_, its rhythm says, _still alive and getting ready to fight another day_. Being the one hooked up to the machine, it turns out, is an entirely different matter.

For one, it hurts like hell.

Izumi forces himself to open his eyes despite the brightness, and finds himself looking at the worst possible nurse ever.

"Good afternoon, sunshine," Abe says.

He tries to answer, but only a croak comes out of his throat.

Abe watches him struggle to get a word out for a moment, then shakes his head. "Don't move." Obviously, Izumi tries to turn his head to see what he's doing, and winces from the pain in his neck.

"Told you," Abe tells him. He hits something by the side of the bed, and Izumi feels it rise, bringing him to a sitting position. Then there's a glass at his mouth, and he drinks with gratitude.

Things feel marginally better when he's done, and he can take a good look around. It's a room like any of the others in the hospital wing, with a single window facing north -- vampire-friendly. Abe is sitting on a chair next to the bed, a laptop balanced on his knees, and stops paying attention the moment he sets the empty glass back on the bedside table.

There isn't a single flower or card, but maybe he's not in as bad a state as it feels. Then again, the fight happened in the early hours of the morning; it must have been at least twelve hours. Surely more people could have found time to come visit him? And having Abe ignore him is kind of unnerving.

"I see our patient's woken up!"

_Now_ Izumi knows he's in trouble. While Momoe is technically Chief of Medicine, the hospital wing runs so smoothly these days that she hardly takes the trouble to drop by anymore, busy as she is keeping this branch of the Organization standing. Her coming to see an agent right after he woke up can only mean one thing: she has a point to make, and it's not going to be pleasant.

"Let me see that chart," she says, not even bothering to ask him how he's feeling. "Where was the... Ah, here it is. 'Adrenaline level indicates prolonged fighting'... blah blah... 'heavy blood loss, three broken ribs'... nothing that won't heal." She looks up from the chart long enough to flash him a grin that has nothing human about it. If Izumi didn't know that no vampire can ever be allowed this far up in the Organization, he'd seriously wonder about her.

"Oh and a sticky note!" She waves the bright pink slip of paper around, but he's been training enough to know how to ignore the decoy and keep his focus on the real threat. "'Almost got his spleen punched out', it says here."

She looks at him expectantly. He stares back, unblinking.

After what feels like minutes she looks away as though nothing happened, and puts the chart back in its place at the foot of the bed. "Well, I can see you're going to be fine. Abe-kun is writing up the report on this incident, so please cooperate with him." With another flash of that disturbing grin she's gone, and Izumi breathes a sigh of relief. That wasn't too bad, after all.

Abe finds something in the laptop bag at his feet, and tosses it at Izumi. "Let's start easy. You were found at the door of the main building, with this in your thigh sheath. What is it?"

Izumi takes a glance at the piece of cardboard. Easy, indeed. "It's a beermat." Although this probably means that Haruna filched his best knife, damn him.

"Can you tell me where it came from?"

The coaster sports a guy in the process of hitting what is sure to be a homerun, so that's not hard, either. "I'm guessing Vlady's?"

"That was my analysis as well. Would you care to read me what's written on the back?"

Feeling like the worst is yet to come, Izumi turns it over, and groans on the inside. At least Haruna wasn't so tacky as to write the message in blood, but that's barely even a comfort. "It says "Think about it, Izumin.' And it's signed with a weird drawing that I'm interpreting as a vampire giving a victory sign."

"So, what was that about?"

He lets the coaster slide from his fingers, closing his eyes. "It's nothing, okay? Just drop it."

To his surprise, Abe says "Okay" and starts typing, mumbling under his breath. "When presented with the evidence of collusion with a known deserter, Agent Izumi refused to-"

"Oh, fine. Haruna attacked me on my way back from Vlady's. While we were fighting he offered to turn me, I said no, he punched me out." No lie detector is going to fault him on that.

If only Abe wasn't staring at him with a frown as if to say _good, now let's try for the _whole _truth_. But Izumi's just stared Momoe down not five minutes ago. Surely he can take Abe.

Surely.

"Ah, you're up."

They both look at the door where Mizutani is standing, wide-eyed and jittery. He comes in, quickly followed by Hamada.

Abe raises his hands to the ceiling in defeat. "I'm done here." He snaps the laptop shut, picks up the beermat and makes for the door. At the last moment he turns to Mizutani. "I'm blaming this on you."

"What? But it's not my fault! I wasn't even there!"

Abe gives him a level look and disappears down the corridor without a further word, leaving the three of them in uncomfortable silence.

Eventually Hamada steps up, left hand digging in the messenger bag slung across his shoulder. As usual, Izumi's eyes are attracted to his right arm, forever resting in its sling, and then he looks away. Two years, and he's never dared to ask whether Hamada blames him for the injury.

Certainly he's not here on a social call, as he raises a black piece of plastic. "Abe had your radio sent to R&amp;D to get it fixed, but I can't find anything wrong with it. Do you remember when it malfunctioned?" It sounds like such an innocent question, too.

"It didn't," Izumi admits, and in the corner of his eye he can see Mizutani twitch. "I didn't use it."

"Wasn't that a little reckless?" Hamada asks distractedly, tossing the radio back in his bag. It makes Izumi want to scream at him because who the fuck is he to use that word, after throwing himself in a useless battle he had no chance of winning and losing a limb for it?

Of course, picking a one-on-one fight with one of the most powerful vampires of the generation for the sole purpose of relieving stress might have lost him the moral high ground on this particular debate, but that doesn't mean Hamada gets to throw him the first stone either.

"I lived," he answers with a shrug.

Hamada nods. "I'll still keep this a little longer, we'll have upgrades in a couple of weeks and I doubt you'll be getting out before that. I'll tell you when you can come pick it up."

He leaves with a wave, and now Izumi is really getting annoyed. That's three people who've come and gone since he woke up, and not a single one of them has even bothered to ask--

"How are you feeling?" There's familiarity in the sulkiness of Mizutani's voice. It's almost comforting.

"Everything hurts, but it's not unbearable. Whatever painkiller I'm on, it works," he says, nodding at the I.V. stuck in his arm. "What about you?" He hasn't noticed before, too wary of Hamada, but now that he's looking Mizutani doesn't look half as perky as he should, the slouch even more pronounced than usual and dark circles under his eyes. "You don't look so good."

Mizutani shrugs, but falls down rather heavily on the chair vacated by Abe earlier.

Izumi frowns. Mizutani never misses a chance to complain about the hardships of his unlife. "Seriously, shouldn't you be sleeping? It's the middle of the afternoon."

Barely are the words out of his mouth that Izumi understands Momoe's punishment. It's sheer elegance in its simplicity: make the tension rise steadily, then make him think he's getting a reprieve when he's actually falling from bad to worse.

"Yeah, I should be sleeping," Mizutani hisses, glaring at him. "I should have been sleeping yesterday, too, and the day before." His volume is rising steadily, something Izumi doesn't think he's ever heard. "Only how am I supposed to sleep when some other vampire drained you to within an inch of your life and we didn't know if you'd pull through for days?" He stands up and starts pacing. In the small room, it looks more like he's spinning around. "We used most of the blood reserves after last week's battle. There wasn't enough for you, and even if there was, you had to go through heavy surgery. Momoe was operating on you for eight hours, and you know the first thing she did when she came out of that room?" Izumi doesn't dare move. The idea of Mizutani getting angry has always amused him, the image of a puppy trying ineffectually to nip at the hand that feeds him, but now that he's the target of it, every word cuts deep. "She asked if I wanted to be the one to turn you, if it looked like you wouldn't make it. Do you get that? _She asked me to prepare to kill you._ Twice, if it went wrong and you turned against us."

The worst part, Izumi realizes, isn't that everyone is letting him know that he did something really stupid without openly acknowledging it. It's that none of them seem to care _why_ he did it, as though it couldn't matter anyway because nothing could justify the danger he's put himself and the Organization in.

So Momoe acts caustic, Abe haughty, Hamada professional, and he can withstand all of those but not this, not Mizutani hurling angry words at him because he is not acting, doesn't know how to. He is as furious as he sounds, as lost as he looks, and he has every right to be.

Knowing you're in the wrong isn't a good basis to get into an argument.

Thankfully, a timid knock on the door prevents him from having to try, but the relief only lasts for a second. This might still be part of Momoe's plan, after all, and if she's sent the sweetest nurse in the hospital to lay another layer of guilt on him, he might have to desert and join Haruna after all.

But Shinooka only apologizes for disturbing them as she makes her way to the bed. Mizutani nods at her and comes back to sit on the chair, slouching a little, a clenched fist resting on the covers. The nurse checks his chart sticks a thermometer in Izumi's mouth before refilling the glass with water, making sure he has enough pillows to sit comfortably.

Izumi glances at his partner, and finds him staring back. They both look away immediately, but Izumi wants to make things better, to cover the gaping distance between them. He reaches out, rests his hand on Mizutani's. The fist unclenches ever so slowly as Shinooka makes small talk about the weather, the food he's getting for dinner, the latest baseball game, and by the time the thermometer beeps their hands are wrapped together against Izumi's leg, shielded from her sight.

"You seem to be doing well, considering your wounds!" she tells him cheerfully. "The doctor will come later to give you the details, but for now, please keep resting and do not get up by yourself. You can call a nurse with this button, this one controls the bed, and this remote here will allow you to control the morphine drip if the pain gets bad. Don't worry about abusing it, it's limited to a fixed amount per six hours." Her smile is so sunny, he can't help but smile back, soothed by her perfect bedside manner.

She jots down a few things on the chart, then wishes him a prompt recovery. He almost admits that he's not sure he deserves it, but she's already gone, the door closed behind her, and he sags back on the pillows, squeezing Mizutani's hand.

"I'm sorry." He shouldn't give in that easily, perhaps. No apology can be successfully offered to someone unprepared to accept it, but he still wants to try. "I didn't mean for things to turn out this way."

"I was scared," Mizutani admits, his hand clenching around Izumi's. "It was getting really late and you weren't coming back and I wanted to go look for you but the sun was going to rise and then they came to tell me that..." He stops, his shoulders shaking. Izumi wishes he could give him more time to compose himself.

"Mizutani," he says, trying not to sound too unkind despite his gritted teeth. "You realize you have vampire strength, right?"

"Huh?" he blinks questioningly, and it's a couple of painful seconds before he makes an apologetic sound and releases his grip on Izumi's hand. With any luck, only a couple of bones are broken. And anyway, he's got morphine.

Mizutani sinks on the bed, letting his head fall between his arms, face turned Izumi's way. He really does look exhausted, and Izumi feels another pang of guilt at having caused it. He reaches up, pats his partner's head. "Shouldn't you go to bed now? You can yell at me better when you've had some rest."

He gets a snort in response to the smartass comment, but Mizutani shakes his head. "I have things to tell you. Momoe said..." he blinks, as if to concentrate on instructions he probably only got half an hour ago. "She said we're off the roster until you're fully recovered, but since you didn't get injured in the line of duty, we'll still be ranked." Which means they'll drop to the bottom of the rankings, which Izumi doesn't care about and Mizutani does. It's scary, the way that woman works them, can punish him without having to file a single piece of paperwork that could help the higher-ups trace what he's done. "And we're supposed to use that time to improve our teamwork. Starting with communication, she said."

_Take the beating like a man_, Izumi tells himself. _Whatever doesn't kill you makes you more able to stand her emotional abuse_. And it isn't as though he can't dole out some of his own.

"Communication, okay. Let's talk; Did something happen with Nurse Shinooka? You barely looked a her." The last time he saw the two of them in the same room, Mizutani displayed all the discretion and self-restraint of an hyper puppy. As much as he'd like to think that Mizutani's disinterest had to do with his partner having just narrowly escaped death, that 'last time' was when Mizutani first woke up as a vampire, so he must have had some stuff on his mind back then, as well.

He groans and hides his face in his arms. "Nothing happened," he says. At least he's done pretending there was nothing there; that got a little tiring after a while. "It's just, vampire senses, you know? A while after I got turned, everyone started smelling differently."

"What, are you smelling she smells bad?"

"Not bad!" his partner protests. "Just... off, I guess."

"I see." He doesn't, not really, but now is a delicate time to complain about not getting the intricacies of the vampire experience.

And there's a more pressing matter, that he's never seriously thought about before. "Everyone? Really?"

"Hmmm," Mizutani answers, sounding half-asleep. "Abe smells angry all the time, and it got even worse when I told him. And Tajima beats off too much."

Izumi lets out a burst of laughter, which gets cut short when the pain explodes in his ribs. Gritting his teeth, he hits the appropriate button on the remote at his side, and takes note. Laughing is a bad idea.

"What about me?" he asks, curious despite being unsure of liking the answer.

The vampire turns his head to look back at him, and seems to hesitate. "Neutral, I guess," he says after a moment. "I mean, I can tell when you come in the room and stuff, but it's kinda weak compared to most people."

Izumi doesn't fail to notice that he never said if it was neutral good or neutral bad, but he decides against pushing it when Mizutani is falling asleep on the spot. "Are you going to sleep?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Mizutani protests defiantly, then ruins it by yawning.

A minutes later he's not moving anymore, and doesn't even flinch when Izumi weaves a finger in his hair. Nor does he react to the renewed apology, whispered so low that only a vampire could hear it. But that's fine; Izumi's pretty sure he'll get to say it again and again in the weeks to come.


End file.
